Some Constituent Parts of Health

Someone called me, this morning ... struggling with life, suffering through the day to day madnesses of having an 86 year old mother with dementia and not-a-so-great personality thyat keeps getting her kicked out of one old-timers place after another. She was really suffering with all the complexities this entails and with all the calls that come in .... 'Your Mom did it, again. We're kicking her out.'

It reminded me of some of the constituent parts of health ... three in particular.

(1) The recognition that feelings are not forced upon us directly by external events. Years ago, there was a coffee-house ... and old-time coffee-house with music ... in Buffalo. It was owned by a guy named Jerry Ravens. I remember his name and not his music ... I like to think largely due to a bit of graffitti in the bathroom. One person wrote: My Mother made me a homosexual. Another person apparently came along and penned: If I get her the wool, will she make me one, too.

Most people use such expressions as: You made me this or that .... angry ... or happy ... or .... Maybe external events catalyze certain feelings ... but they don't make them. Exploring the sources inside of our feelings may be the beginning of wisdom.

(2) Talking about exploration. Explaining feelings don't get us anywhere ... but exploring them does a great deal. Feeling our way into 'sadness' or 'happiness' ... pain and pleasure ... lets us feel what's most human in us at the only moment we have ... now. The goal isn't to get rid of feelings .... but to let them visit us ... like a wave ... flow over and through us ... yielding a sense of wholeness.

(3) The third thing that came to my mind talking to this woman was the ability to play .... play has at least two meanings ... one is the form it takes in, say, 'kids' play' .... For two hours on Saturday, a visiting three year old began to play with Melmo ... a funny-talking old man who claimed to be three years old, just like her .... Her older brother already was hesitant to allow someone Playing in the Last Quarter to pretend to be 3 years old and to talk with a squeaky voice. Losing that form of play is tragic ... keeping it may be a bit of health.

The other meaning the word 'play' carries is 'give' .... without that play, bridges break, houses crack and families splinter.

All three of these constituent parts of health can endure well into the Last Quarter of Life. Play on!

The Changing of the Guard

Marsha and I are getting the greatest of kicks out of the new crop of on-air pundits ... the young ones. When parents greet their newborns, many can get excited over their ten little fingers .... "Comes with fingernails, at no extra cost" ... and the toes and the little nose. It's not quite like that with this new generation but sitting back and listening to Chris Hayes talk in fully-formed ideas ... 'Geez, Louise ... he's not even Forty.' I think it was on his show that he had an Ezra Klein who according to his Wikipedia page is 26 and actually thinks quantitatively .... puts together solid arguments based on thought and number-crunching. So, here's a Chris Hayes and an Ezra Klein and a Jonathan Capeheart and Alex Wagner (and I could go on) ... and Marsha and I are awestruck by their clarity of thought and -- for that matter -- that a generation is beginning to look like they can get along despite differing religions and skin-tones. We looked at each other, at one point, and opined how sad it was that we couldn't adopt them. True, there are other youngins who are sharpening their teeth and on the attack and whose thinking is purely "which side are y'on" thinking, but so many of them seem to have all ten fingers .... Love it.

I suppose that Playing in the Last Quarter is somewhat akin to playing poker. There are those who, like Miniver Cheevey (sad that feww read the poetry of EA Robinson, these days .. but times change), "curse the darkness" ... always wishing that they had better hands to play. Two thousand years ago, the pundits of the Ethics of the Fathers asked: Who is rich? and answered: he who rejoices in what (s)he has. This morning, the bathroom door was not fully closed and I was seeking to complete the task of clothing myself for what promises to be a quiet Sunday. I was struggling -- well, at least groaning -- getting into my undershorts .... socks were worse. Marsha and Gunther-dog, I'm convinced, were both lying in bed (Gunther has developed an Oedipal problem) amused by der groaner.

And it was this weekend that one of my grand-daughters led a congregation in cantllating part of a liturgy.

Sonny Bono and Cher (or was it Mamma Cass) had it right: And the beat goes on.

Except for those poor wretches who cannot apparently revel in the flight of this next set of shooting stars ... of the Alexes, Chrisses, Ezras and Jonathans.

I guess this was all said by Anna in the The King and I

Pushing on 47 years

I think it a week from today and 47 years ago that Marsha and I met. I won't bother to count the days .... has to be something like 17,000 days .... these are large numbers .... It's not 1-2-3 .... Getting to Play in the Last Quarter, that is.

I was at a meeting last night. There were 6 of us .... I think the group has been meeting for 30 years to discuss children at risk and issues surrounding their treatment. We never did discuss the planned reading on Trauma. Easy to take detours at this period of life. I don't think anyone was much over 90 in the group .... maybe one of the participants is in her early 60's. The men -- between them -- don't have a good set of hair. One person pointed out that using the collective noun "hair" might not be best .... with as few as we had, "hairs" might be a preferred usage ... perhaps we could even number them .... hair #1 ... hair #17. You got the picture ... too late for a comb-over for most. And like Players in the Fourth Quarter of a scrimmage .... there was no lack of wounded warriors.

Not every morning ... but this morning ... it is striking that Marsha and I are both at least a bit tired .... and our kids are beginning to look old.

....
...
..
.


I am taking a vacation in 18 days but who's counting?

Weekend of Glees and Sadnesses

How they balance ... Glee and Sadness. A friend invited us to a very crunchy prayer service .... mixture of guitars and drums, liturgy and Scripture. A small group of people, very different than Marsha and I in their take on the world ... connected to each other and to their meditations. I have sought to learn how to cherish the excitement of others .... I suppose that exists as a goodly portion of the core of my religious sense ... the lifelong process of learning to revel in the joys of another's harvest. Ah! And we were invited to lunch with our friend and his family, afterwards.

Indeed! I think this is a part of successful Playing in the Last Quarter ... of accepting the unfoldings ... generation after generation. Children, Grand-children.

I suppose another core part is the ability to share in the sadness. An ex-student of mine -- now, I suppose, a 55'ish year old man -- wrote about the death of his Mother, at 90.

Sad when we lose our people ....

 

My religious tradition says two different things in confronting death ....

 

Baruch Dayan Emes .... Blessed is the Truthful Judge (upon hearing that someone important to a friend has died)

 

and

 

HaMakom Y'nachem eschem b'sh'ar aveilei Yrushalalayim .... this one's harder to translate .... usually it's rendered as May God (literally The Place or, I suppose, The Cosmos) bring you comfort (tho, that word used for comfort has more the meaning of Bring You Around) among the rest of the Mourners of Jerusalem, etc. 

 

Much seemed to change in my view of the World as I had to say good-bye to my Mother, even tho she had been victim of Alzheimers for many years and under the spell of both inner and outer directed aphasias. I needed to be "Brought Around" to a new place .... Later, I chose the words "NACHAMU" for my license plate ... it's the imperative form of that same verb "Y'Nachem ... Nachamu" that calls out from Isaiah 41 and begins Handl's Messiah .... Nachamu, Nachamu Ami ... Comfort Ye, Comfort Ye, My People .... says your God. Or as I would have it "Come Around! Come Around!"

 

May it be that through the door of deep sadness, that we do, indeed, all come around to integrate that cleansing sadness and its cousin, the welcome state of song-infused joys.

 

 

Eine Kleine Paranoia

There is a kind of paranoia that seeps in in the Fourth Quarter ... something about the manner in which some members of the younger generation feel a need to disembowel you .... to reach into your peritoneum and rip out whatever organs are still functioning. If there's anyone reading out there, they might think such a view a little paranoid, unless, that is, they've experienced similar occurrences.

Marsha and I were at a religious ceremony and party that related to the birth, one month ago, of a strapping young firstborn to his parents ... Scripture requires that such first fruits either be given over to the priestly-class or, else, redeemed. It's a charming ceremony where the parents have a special "right of return or redemption." There really isn't more than a whisper of tension as the new Father says, essentially: I've decided that I wanna keep the kid! I went through this redemption of my own first-born son 45 years ago ... it was, on balance, a good decision. Indeed, it was on the 50 mile trek to this party that that very son convinced me to take a 1200 mile road-trip with him, as our wives flew there in comfort with our youngest grandchild.

All this is to say that I was feeling a degree of ebullience as Marsha and I arrived ... and almost everything, indeed, was wonderful. I don't get to see my cousin very often ... or his wife, 4 kids (one of whom was the 'new Father') and their 11 grandchildren ... running around and being kids. Other folk in that part of the family were equally "gifts to see" ... one, in particular, another cousin's child, had always treated us with such dignity when we'd attend her kids' weddings. Family is -- or so we wish for in our dreams and waking fantasies -- a safe place.

As we were getting ready to leave early (I had early work to do, this AM), there was that other couple. They are 40'ish and have adorable kids and practice another form of the craft which I practice and have, as well and as many members of the family, stayed connected to different forms of our faith-practice. There are many ways to live and they seem to be living one form of the Good Life and practicing ethically and as they see fit.

Still and all, every exchange with this couple has the form of challenging the worldview that informs my form of the craft that we both practice. It wasn't violent ... more mocking, than violent. More like:

             We came to a seminar with so and so. He's brilliant. Do you know A, B and C? You don't? But
             they're neighbors of yours, practicing in the same city and very well-known, No. You really
             must know them (smile, smirk, ....) I mean, they are your neighbors ... your professional neighbors.
             They're world-known. ... 'etc., etc. and so forth.'

We took our leave.

I promise. I am, indeed, Playing in the Last Quarter. I and my style of thinking will inevitably and soon be gone and, yet, I leave such encounters with a sense of being rushed out the door.

In the Babylonian exile, there were codes of law. Among these laws were one that stipulated: if A has pleasure and B has no loss, there is no legal loss. So that if a man is walking in an orchard and sees an apple on the ground and knows that the farmer is overseas for the season and not going to return to harvest this apple, eating it incurs no liability. The reverse, though represents another general principle of ethical thinking: If A has no gain and does something that incurs a loss in B ... gratuitous enmity, it might be called ... is, indeed, a crime.

And it's a crime that left me with glimmers of paranoia in the 50 mile trek home.

Oh! And then the painful recognition

Primus inter Pares ... uh, oh! and then the painful recognition that the Last Quarter brings that one is no longer Primus ... in one's Prime, if you prefer ... at all. Went to see a wonderful play, yesterday, by Annie Baker ... something about body image. It hit home on many levels. An older-younger couple ... one of their sons, an odd -- according to story line -- Asperger's 21 year old and a visiting photographer-in-residence for Body Awareness week at the local crunchy Vermont College where the younger of the couple works. The photographer was White and Male and Older and Greek and travelled about taking pictures of naked women of all ages. The younger of the women was in charge of body awareness week and prepared to disembowel the photographer and his male gaze. The older woman, the mother of the porn-loving Aspergery fellow, was ready to experience disrobing. That same younger woman spoke disparagingly about the older woman who only taught high school. It was still more complex. The Greek photographer turned a Tuesday night into a Jewish Wine-and-Candles Sabbath. A farce with serious undertones.

Any case, I thoroughly enjoyed it and afterwards Marsha, I and our 70+ year old forever friends went out to a tony sort of Italian restaurant. That was good, too, even if the husband was on the verge of zinging his wife of 49 years. At 46 years married, Marsha and I must be newlyweds for we haven't given up our need to "zing" each other only in private. Any case, all was well with the four who had met in 1968 ... It was a great day and, before the play, Marsha and I got to see our oldest's project ... a cafe ... come alive for the first time. I talked to his young customers and friends (he's 45 and still on the cusp of the 2nd to 3rd Quarters) and this business could keep him from travelling 150,000 miles a year in his other business.

Well ... all was well, indeed,  till I spontaneously went into atrial-fib, just as the waiter was asking about dessert. .... chances are a bit too much fatty food ... but frankly, I'm not certain I have a clue. Whatever! or Primus? My Ass, I could say. Suddenly even walking up the ramp to the parking lot was difficult. How the Young have grown Old! By the top of the ramp, my heart rate was 4+ times what it typically is under such circumstances ... pushing 190. A patient had called during the play .... I needed to wait to call them back, at least till my heart rate went down nearer 100. It was all I could do to glance occasionally at Eli Manning and the Giants outplay the New England Patriots.

Ach du lieber ... My task for my remaining years will be, at least in part, to vicariously enjoy those who can maintain the notion of being first ... of Primus. And not Primus in the Land of the Senex , as maybe I can convince myself at moments that I am .... Primus amongst my senile, senescent and sunsetting peers.

Janis Joplin said: "Get it while you can." She didn't stick around long enough to offer her youthful wisdom on the question of "Whaddya'do when you can't!"